SC has erred by letting Lalu off

The Supreme Court’s decision to grant bail to RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, who is serving a five-year term in Ranchi’s Birsa Manda jail for his role in the 1999 fodder scam, is once again a grave error on the part of the apex judicial body. The bench headed by chief justice P Sathasivam and justice Ranjan Gogoi has granted the relief to the Bihari leader considering that he has already undergone one year of the sentence in two phases. But how is that a condition for deciding this interim relief for the disgraced politician? Looks the Supreme Court is all set to give judgments that will go down in history as major blunders. After going seriously wrong on the issue of upholding the constitutional validity of the archaic Section 377, the SC goes all its way to offer relief to a politician whose complicity in one of the most infamous corruption cases to come out from this country has been proved in a number of courts already. Even Lalu’s co-accused was granted bail earlier by a trial court, along with 36 others out of the 44 accused in the fodder scam, thus effectively paving way for this orchestrated relief for the seasoned politician. Obviously, now that the national elections are around the corner, Lalu’s bail would come to the aid of the sagging fortunes of the Indian National Congress, which just witnessed a massive rout from the recently concluded four state assembly polls. Looks like the SC order will now endear the RJD chief to the Congress or the UPA dispensation, in case Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) stays away from entering a pre-poll entente. This is a wrong turn, to say the least, and sends out a bad message to everyone disgusted by the entrenched culture of corruption in the country.